Last KidPak of the Year!

This morning Santa Buc-ee left something a little different under the Christmas tree - Buc-ee's Toilet Spray!  Yeah, they make that too.  

This morning we were at KidPak again, and we had a great time with our skit on stage with Joseph, Mary, a donkey, shepherds and an angel.  Josh was leading the kids in a game where they had to finish the lyrics - to Christmas carols.  And Bailee read them the Christmas story from the Bible, and talked about the Light of the World.  That led nicely into our own version of a candlelight service downstairs.  We order these battery-powered candles, and turn the lights down for a quiet worship service with Christmas carols and other worship songs.  It's a sweet morning, and Maddie of course took some great pictures.  Here below are just a few of them of our service this morning.

Maddie has been going to the second service upstairs - in the main sanctuary.  What we call "Big People Church," where Pastor Franklin leads service each morning.  She's been going there the last few months while we cover the remaining service downstairs. 

Free Chapel gave away some ornaments today to families and those look nice.  They have a message of peace on them - you can see we already have it on our piano room tree.  And we got another ornament from Emma too!

She made us one last year too!  This one is nice, and as you can see, it's' already on our tree.  We got home today and just spent the day recovering.  I'm still recovering from this long-term illness.  We heard the door bell this afternoon and our neighbors gave us a big basket of delicious cookies and home baked goods - they were all dressed up in pajamas and it was a lot of fun.  These are our neighbors across the street, and the mom was a walker too - or a runner - on the street.  I bring that up because I'm on the treadmill just about every day too - both of us trying to keep healthy.  And yet she too has had the same exact symptoms and illness for the same exact amount of time.  It was encouraging to hear, in an odd way.  Obviously I don't celebrate other people's illnesses.  But I just thought it was me.  This has been really debilitating and demoralizing.

Nevertheless, back on the treadmill I went.  I finished "Rocky II" while on that treadmill, and wow, I forgot how great these movies were.  I've got my path for the rest of the year, watching all these "Rocky" movies.  I'm hoping to get to "Rocky IV" by Christmas Eve, because that's another Christmas movie, sort of.  It depends on who you ask.  There's a great debate about this sort of thing!  Does it make it a Christmas movie just because it takes place around Christmas time?  I'm going to watch it and decide for myself.  Meanwhile, here's a few pictures of our tree. 

Today was the last day of Hanukkah.  Mom, Maddie and I turned the lights down a bit - Maddie lit the candles while I said the blessing over the Shamash candle, and then read the scripture as Maddie lit the remaining candles one by one.   We read the devotional after that, the last one for the last night.

Look at these two cuties!  We had those chocolate coins ready down there, but honestly... they weren't the best tasting ones!  No dreidel gaming for those!

But we did do this other card game that was a lot of fun.  It was a Muppet Christmas Carol card game, and it's pretty easy to learn to play - and it was actually a lot of fun.  And of course there's all the great artwork and characters in it.  But we played this about three times in a row, it was so much fun.  You can see Maddie's already amassed about three gifts in her pile there, on her way to another big victory.  We'll have to try this again.

I have to say I'm loving this Christmas coffee.  The description of this fudge-flavored coffee is so great.  And the artwork on all these bags of coffee is fantastic, fitting with the Bones theme - even the leg lamp there.   And... it's delicious.  My sense of taste has been going in and out for the last few months, so when the flavors and smells hit me, it's just really nice.

We closed out tonight with some puzzling and a movie.  We're all working on this Thomas Kincaid puzzle with a Christmas theme, and we've got to get it done by Christmas so we can use the dining room table!  We thought it'd be done by now, but it is a thousand-piece puzzle and the pieces are unusual in their size and on top of that, there's a lot of similar-colored puzzle pieces to work through.  It's been a little more challenging than the usual puzzle, but we're almost there!

As that was going on, Mom and I watched "The Bells of St. Mary's," one of our favorite Christmas movies.  We still have plenty of other Christmas movies to go through, but we'll get to them.  We're not going on any big trip this year after Christmas, so we can have some fun watching a few things that week.

Tonight we inched a little closer to the end of "Hogfather," reading before bedtime.  We're at Mr. Teatime's downfall, literally, and of course Susan saving Hogswatch in the Discworld.  It's a fun book, and yeah, that's another movie to watch soon enough!

We said our prayers after that, and it was time for another long winter's nap.  It's cold out there, and the blankets feel nice and warm!